Last Night in Beantown :(

Well, we have had an amazing week thus far and unfortunately it is coming to an end. It has been filled with highlights of bacon, President Thomas Edison, undefeated Taboo team, and other lasting memories. Today we went to Medicine Wheel and worked with the Cushing House Boys and the other youth there for the last time. Roberto and Rachele are really special and we appreciated getting to know them and work with them. And Michael is truly a one of a kind person who opened up his work and his life to us in a great way. We laughed, we cried, we smiled, and we grew. Truly a perspective changing experience (copyright ASB lol).

-Chris

Monday and Tuesday in Bawston!

After a nutritious breakfast of mini bagels, apples and plenty of coffee, the troop set off to the Medicine Wheel headquarters in south Boston, a neighborhood renowned for urban white poverty. We arrived at 9:45am at a spacious studio in a modest area and were greeted by the ever chipper Michael Downing, our gracious host for the week. After an orientation and introduction that included listening to Michael tell his compelling life story, we began our two major projects for the week. The first was to assist the organization in its biggest fundraising event in May by getting down and dirty in hand-printing 1500 invitations designed by Medicine Wheel's own young employees. Medicine Wheel's events center around a natural element, such as Earth or Water, each year, and this year's Air theme resulted in 12 beautiful invitation designs of birds. Our second project also involved cutting out hundreds of birds from recycled paper made from shredded handwritten personal stories. The dark and reddish brown birds will soon be hung on the ceiling all around the studio. Tomorrow two of our participants, Vic (the first in Vic squared), and Chris will be teaching dance and poetry to Cushing House boys, who are transitioning substance abusers who come to Medicine Wheel for the first 45 days of their stay. We will also get a tour of No Man's Land from Roberto, a 19-year-old post-substance abuser and a 5-year employee of Medicine Wheel, and begin its spring cleaning. After our day's work we plan to go to the Museum of Fine Arts' free admission night. Thanks for reading and keep coming back for updates! Bed time.-margaret

We're here!

We arrived! We finally got to Boston after a fairly un-eventful 9 hour drive. I successfully drove the monster van with minimal issues. We witnessed two near-accidents on the Jersey Turnpike, but arrived in the city around 7 p.m. tired, excited, and in one piece.

Our hostel is very cool. It's a block from the Berklee College of Music, so it's filled with lots of artsy shops and student-friendly restaurants and cafes (with student-friendly prices to boot -yay!). The building itself is super old and close to everything.

Today, our plan is to hang out around the city until lunchtime, when we'll head over the home of Michael Dowling - the founder of Medicine Wheel Productions, the non-profit we're working with this week. The South Boston St. Patrick's Day parade is today, and he's invited us to watch it from his place. It should be barrels of fun!

For now, I'm heading out to check out the neighborhood in the daylight. I'll take some pictures to share.

Katie - Staff Advisor

DAY ONE (pre-trip departure)

Before we left College Park, half of our group decided to go to the bathroom while the other half waited in one of the several lanes of Lot 1 (college parkers know what I'm talking about.) While we were waiting in the Lot, two guys in a van decided they wanted to drive through us instead of drive in the 50 other lanes in Lot 1. Chris (modestly) stated that there were other lanes they could have went through. To our surprise, the man in the van (which by this time already passed us) decided to reverse back to us, roll down his window, and start yelling at modest Chris. As he continues to yell at Chris, another man comes out of the passenger side and starts to yell as well. Then our two new friends hop back in the car and pull off, bringing our first day to a very interesting/ridiculous start.

-Vic (not Vicki)

DAY ONE.

We finally arrived at the Boston International Hostel after a long car ride! Our van beeped when we reversed, by the way. I thought this was noteworthy. It made us very conspicuous (and perhaps important? Nah.)

Once we arrived, Katie and I went off to find parking and that was an inadvertent adventure. We basically got pseudo ripped off by this sketchy dude. We bartered him down to $20/day for parking, down from $30. We also had to pay the entire $160 up front. He was a bit...difficult...to deal with, so we circled a couple of blocks (including a teeeeensy alleyway that the van miraculously squeezed through) and ended up back at square one. Mr. Sketch won.

We all ate tons of chicken teriyaki and now we are here, on the first floor of this super cute hostel. We are obviously facebooking, blogging, and staring at all the ~foreign~ kids. They keep looking over at us, probably because we are loud, obnoxious, and overtly American.

That's all for now! Tomorrow, we're visiting an artist's house and seeing the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

--Vicki